


Vengeance is Justice, Dressed as a Bride

by FallenGabriella



Category: Taste of Fear (1961)
Genre: Also Writing Every Christopher Lee Role a Fanfic, And I Refuse to Enable Hammer Horror, And if There Were Rules I Wouldn't Follow Them, F/M, In My Bid to Make a Work for Every Role Christopher Lee has Ever Done, It's insane, Playing Dracula 12 Times Will Do That To a Man, Some of Them Have Terribly Written Female Protagonists, This Had To Be Written, Welcome to Gabe Finds a Way to Break the Internet, Well Not Every Single One, i don't make the rules, too many tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27646370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FallenGabriella/pseuds/FallenGabriella
Summary: Maggie stays with Dr. Gerrard following the events of the film.
Relationships: Dr. Pierre Gerrard/Maggie Frenchen | Penelope "Penny" Appleby
Kudos: 4





	Vengeance is Justice, Dressed as a Bride

**Author's Note:**

> I've no idea. I wrote this in a single afternoon. 
> 
> I never Beta, we die like men.

  1. **Halberd**



“Are you feeling alright, Maggie?”

“I hate it when you ask that.”

She wondered when her unkindness would drive him away from her. If it even could. He was not being patronizing, he was not questioning her out of some false pity or even sympathy. He genuinely cared and she hated that he did. She wondered if it was her own self she hated more.

Hate, hate, hate –

But it was not what had driven her to seek out Penny’s stepmother.

 _Her name was Jane_.

She had to remind herself of that, as if she’d forget, as if the blood on her hands would mysteriously vanish. But she couldn’t scrub those syllables from her mind anymore than she could that rust from the edge of the sink. It came back, swirling down the drain, down the warped plughole of her mind. Filling, filling, the water scalding through the edges of her nails, adding her own iron to the copper she could taste. Then, all at once, it burst –

The glass and the sand, in her lashes, and in her mouth. The cold and salt licked at the inside of her nose, the waves hitting those same keys, and the ivory turned to gold to red to brown.

“I’m sorry.” His apology was easy and kind. His hands were warm and firm.

She remembered how they felt against her scalp, combing her hair back from her face, and how those same fingers had held her tight to his chest. His coat smelled of evergreen and sage, the subtle twist of cologne at his wrist and neck. Something earthen, something clean. The cotton, thick and heavy, was still warm from where it had clung to his shoulders. He had slipped it off, then around her thin frame, the ocean water forcing the fabric to cling to shaking body.

“I hate it when you say that.”

Harsh and clipped, like the brine still clinging to her throat, the brandy he had clasped her fingers around.

“Can I say nothing, without bringing offense?”

His lips quirked, brow drawing with those familiar lines of concern. They had molded into his face. He was only thirty-nine, but he appeared to have aged quite a bit more than that. Maggie believed it had to have been his profession, stealing the youth from his forehead, and the smile from his mouth. His brow looked harsh in the afternoon light, his cheeks were strident against his face, which she thought was a bit too long. His eyes were charming, at least.

“No.”

Maggie hated how placid her voice was, how unseemly and unbroken. It concealed everything else. Everything she refused to say and didn’t know how to say.

“No, you can say nothing at all.”

Defeat etched itself into the caverns of his face, those unforgiving, too long attributes of muscle and bone.

“Alright Maggie, alright.”

  1. **Mirror**



She wondered if it was his status as a Doctor, her own as a nurse, that allowed him to believe he had a right to her first name. Everyone else was called ‘Ms.’ or ‘Mr.’ with care and respect. His accent affected how he approached certain, harsher English words, but he handled his own native tongue with the grace of a learned man. He sometimes reverted to it while talking, not so much slipping as he lost himself in the moment. Sometimes, when describing something, looking for something, he would say it in French.

“Maggie, have you seen my, my… you know…” He snapped his fingers, once, twice, hand swirling in the air. “Ma cravate?”

She actually snorted at that. He was fortunate they both knew French. Penny had wanted to learn, but languages didn’t come easy to her.

She didn’t need to live with him. She had told him that. He had, of course, agreed to as much. She had plenty of money, thanks to Penny. Pierre had assured her she could go anywhere, leave whenever she liked, but his door was open. Open and welcoming, without judgement and without pity.

He had offered enough of that, had given so much of it throughout the years. Maggie supposed that happened to all Doctors – they reached a point where they had nothing left to give. They could pretend, could break the mold of their indifference to offer some practiced form of sympathy, but in the end, there could be nothing genuine to them. No, they had to save that, cultivate it for themselves. They were masters of deception, Doctors. They had to be.

“You believe I’m a monster.” Pierre murmured one evening, when she stood on the veranda.

“How can I?” Maggie dared to look into those eyes, deep and dark and knowing. They were obsidian scalpels, rending her open, tearing her secrets from her with an ease she hated. “You were the one that helped me then, formed the plan with me, and saved me after the crash.” True, all of it. She’d probably have died without him.

She was relieved he was unmoored by emotions, beholden to no higher power. He was impenetrable, unmovable in that way. He was something for her to cling to, to break herself against amidst the storm. And he let her. She was killing herself on his apathy and he was letting her.

She turned to see his furrowed brow, the deep-seated anguish that mocked her. She wished he’d give up the pretense.

“Maggie, please,” he reached for her, as he had that day on the cliff. Had he seen the temptation in her eyes? “You do not have to face this alone.”

 _Alone_. _Yes_ , _that’s right_ …

Penny had been alone. She had gone down to that river, stared out over the water, and descended into the depths. By herself. Without her there, when she had never left her side before. Where had she been? Where had she gone? What could have been more important than Penelope’s life?

 _I went to the shop_. _I left her by herself_.

She had become so… so despondent, so anguished those last few days. The room had become stifling, overcome by her desperation. The despair became so thick, she choked on the tears that gathered on Penny’s things. Her clothes, the bedsheets, her handkerchiefs. Everything was matted with salt and snot, the grizzly affair of sorrow stained on every surface that could hold and remember it. Three years culminated in one night. That cabin wasn’t an escape, it was a coffin, and her loneliness those few hours had been the final nail.

 _I knew_. _I knew and I did nothing to stop it_.

Penelope had stopped. To thrash and struggle against the tethers of her existence, flattened by some poor beast, had finally destroyed her. She had felt it, somewhere, deep inside of herself… The unraveling of a frail, fragile life that had not even been allowed to begin. Was she clipped by some divine herald? Her bloom cut apart in those merciless hands, that knew nothing of the love she found in the most mundane things? Or was she snuffed out, her glow barely a flicker, a glimmer that had no choice but to be swallowed by the black?

Nothing could have held Penelope. Maggie found her bravery almost unbearable, painful to behold. Her suffering was even worse. How many times had she closed the door, leaving her to weep in the darkness? There was something too intimate, too private about her grief…

Sometimes, she wanted to think it was more than just her legs.

  1. **Shield**



“ _Maggie_!”

His fingers pried at his collar. Then his suit jacket. She could barely see him. The shore looked so far away. Instinct demanded she propel herself upwards, that she kick and thrash, that she hack up the water invading her lungs. But Penny hadn’t been able to. Why should she? What made her so special?

“Maggie! **Please**!”

He was begging her. As if that could repair her broken vertebra, the compound fractures, and shattered ligaments. As if that could bring her back.

“Maggie!”

She couldn’t hear him anymore. There was only the hollow, hungry howl of the current in her ears. There was no salt here, in the curve of the river, but the water burned all the same. Bracken at her ankles, in her hair. No blue, only green and grey, the pallid yellow and brown in her peripheral.

Air seared her eyes, her nose. She couldn’t see beyond black and blue. Her throat opened and closed, convulsing so hard and fast she gagged. Warm and firm, wrapping tight over her nape, coiling around her waist. Her hands lashed, fingers clawing into the heat that trapped her. Her mouth opened.

Her lungs freed the screech the water had sought to steal.

“Maggie – Maggie.” Her name. Whispered against her ear, into her hair. She drew her fist back, smashing her frail knuckles into the meat of his chest, his shoulder, his jaw. “Listen to me, _listen to me_!” One arm kept her trapped against him, the other caught one of her flailing arms by the wrist. She could feel his callouses, from pens and tools. He brought her limb to his chest, cradling her body into his.

Her legs were tangled with his.

She could feel his suit pants, trailing across her ankles, rubbing against her thighs.

“Maggie, Maggie…” Pierre kept saying her name, kept breathing those same twin syllables into her. Not over her, to be brushed aside, or around her to be forgotten. His nose pressed to her cheek, his brow rubbing into hers as he bowed his head and shook it. “Your name is Maggie Frenchen. You grew up in the south of France, in a small village on the edge of Spain.”

As if she didn’t know who she was, as if she had replaced herself with a girl who had been dead for over five months.

“The house your parents lived in, you lived in, with your little sister and brother…” He continued, his mouth almost grazing hers. His breaths were hot, her lips shaking against the heat. “It was white with a blue roof. There was a mosaic in the courtyard.” How did he know? Had he seen it beneath the sun? The blaring walls, the shingles lost against the sky, and the tiles that glittered with all the colors of the sunset? They had danced on a rainbow, sang beneath the tree that wept by the fountain, had ran along the stairway that led into that kitchen that always smelled of sweetness.

“It burned. When you were eight.” The sky collapsed into the blackened shell, a maw of crimson and gold. But the tiles were stained with ash, sulfur tangling into the moss of the tree. She wept beneath it, curled into the gnarled roots, till the embers came and took it too. “It burned and you went to live with your aunt.” They still didn’t know what caused the blaze that stole four lives, leaving only a fifth.

“She raised you to be kind and strong and generous. She raised you to love, Maggie. Some might say too much, too deeply, but I do not believe such a thing possible.” Her face burned, the salt stinging at the edges of her lips. Her arms felt heavy against his broad shoulders, small and pale. Her hands looked strange in his hair, the dark locks clinging in long strands, coiling between her knuckles and across his temples. He was staring at her, with deep, knowing eyes that coaxed more tears to patter into the water below.

“But, I am French, perhaps I am biased.” Pierre offered a weak smile, one that curved the corners of his dark orbs.

Maggie’s was just as feeble, watery and tired.

  1. **Water**



“They would have killed her.” Maggie murmured, more to herself than him.

“Or driven her mad.” Pierre acknowledged. “Though I think the chauffer,” they never said his name anymore. “Had other ideas when I refused to have you incarcerated.” Maggie’s eyes flickered to his. His frown was grim and deep, stealing the amusement she had found so pleasing on his face.

“Penelope wouldn’t have survived what they did to her.” Maggie swallowed the sob from her throat. Pierre reached out, refusing to allow her to struggle alone. His hand was solid beneath hers, the tips of his long fingers stroking along the tender inside of her wrist. “They were going to torture her… Torture her with her own father’s body.” With his corpse. They desecrated his decaying body, treating it like a toy to be propped about, a macabre instrument in their melodrama.

Pierre shook his head. He had no words of comfort to offer, nothing to assuage her guilt, but his presence… She found so much in that alone.

“And her, she… She was jealous. Upset that her lover was playing pretend with the girl she was torturing, set to murder for, for – “

“Greed, my dear.” Pierre finished for her, raising her hand to press his lips to the back of her hand. Her chest pinched, a pleasant ache playing between her ribs. The warmth flowed south, flowed north, filling her throat and coiling around her thighs. She turned her face away, gazing out over the veranda, the verdant fields leading down to the coast. She was thankful for the sunglasses, concealing her moistening eyes.

“Human greed, it’s a simple affliction I’m told, but its diagnosis often leads to a terminal case of cruelty.” His lips quirked again, no hint of malice, but the look of a man who had seen too much. She wondered how many bodies he had looked at, how many times the police had knocked on his door.

  1. **Hurricane**



The brandy glinted on the bar, forgotten and amber. A towel clung to the back of a chair, still damp and sweet smelling. The fire whispered in the hearth, too low for embers. There was a candle somewhere, flickering under the swell of the night. There was a hopper in the grass, playing a tune never heard before. Dew clung to the glass, windows shimmering in the glow of the half crescent moon.

A storm had crawled across the horizon in the afternoon, a drizzle that dampened leaf and awning and petal. Maggie had retreated indoors, filling the tub with an odd sensation curling in her gut. Pierre had finally become comfortable enough to leave her on her own, returning to work that morning. By herself, she stroked her fingers across the strands of steam that curled into the air.

The rain clung to her, turning her shirt translucent where it melded to her skin, white mountains forming where it bunched. She peeled the silk from her arms, reminded of the butterflies in their cocoons, quivering in the garden. Her skirt slid down her thighs, pooling at her ankles, slipping off her feet as she raised them. The cloth felt eerie, a passing, cold caress to her toes. Her eyes slid shut, breaths misting in the air, the bumps arising on her skin made of ice and fire. She shuddered in the grip of sensation, raising her arms to wrap them around herself.

She stayed in the tub for far too long. There was something in the suspension, the denial of touch, and yet the water pressing into every inch of her. Her head descended beneath the surface, absorbing the heat and stillness, the trembling sounds beyond the prison of porcelain and ocean.

She arose only when she heard the front door. The water had grown cool long ago, her own body keeping itself warm. She could taste her pulse on her tongue, feel it rise and fall in her throat. The tile sent a jolt through her feet, skin breaking with hills again, her hair standing at attention. Maggie walked with her numbing toes, her ice-crusted fingertips.

He was nothing if not predictable. His motions never changed, a series of habits that became a way of life, that allowed the days to blend into seamless infinity. Maggie wondered if she could rob him of that, if she could upset that fragile balance… Not for fun, no, she had found plenty of her own amusements.

Something had changed, brought in by that light rain, remembered only by the glistening shine it had left on the veranda, the house, and her. She could feel it, thrumming through her, almost silent. Except it filled her lungs but didn’t make her gasp, it made her heart ache, but her head feel light. Was she drowning? She had tasted madness before. This was not dissimilar, yet there was no sense of familiarity.

“Mag – “His face fell. That long, eerie face, with its soft and hard features, and his dark, terrible eyes. He stared at her. She could see his irises, keen and wide, following the lines of her legs to their apex. His cheek twitched, his jaw flexing. He made a show of trying to look away, but she saw how his gaze flickered over her breasts, her neck. She remained impassive.

“Maggie, you… You should get dressed.” He raised his brandy, but the glass halted before it was even halfway to his lips, clicking against the bar.

“Do you want me to?” As if she weren’t standing naked before him, as if she were merely asking him if he wanted to read the paper before his coffee. His lips pulled; into that not-so-amused smile he often wore when he was uncomfortable.

“I don’t think you would like what I want right now.” A joke, and hardly a good or subtle one.

Maggie smiled herself.

“Try me.”

  1. **Castle**



Silence formed a shroud over them, thicker than the water that had surrounded her, and twice as deafening. Pierre’s smooth lips stroked her cheek, her brow, swirling from her temple to her cheek. His breath drifted across her nose, her jaw, over her chin. Warm and moist, his mouth descended to her own, reminding her that she was living and that was all that mattered.

Her fingers pushed into his hair, the strands tangling between her knuckles. She could feel him, hot as red iron, grazing the inside of her legs. Maggie raised her hips, following the guidance of his hands, his fingers splayed across her thighs. There was no rush to him, no hurried fidgeting of a younger man. He was sure, even in this, especially in this.

The penetration was slow, the full hilt of him an uncomfortable ache that splintered into ecstasy. Maggie panted into his ear, crying out when he surged forward with the full weight of his body. He broke her apart, put her back together, whispering words made of honey and fire into her skin.

He tasted of the bitter brandy, his tongue sweeter for the tea he drank, his gums the same. He smelled like the forest, with the salt of the ocean in his sweat, beading on his brow, down his lean chest. She had seen him run, seen him swim. She was a fool to have believed she could have drowned with him around… Pierre was too fast, as quick in the water as a serpent.

One of his hands gripped hers, knuckles interlocking somewhere in the mass of sheets. Her knees clung to his waist, aching calves leading to arched ankles. Her heels pressed into his back, urging him on, even as he filled her past her brink. She couldn’t tell what sounds she made, where they came from, but Pierre seemed intent on drawing forth as many as he could.

His pace went from an easy tide to a desperate rut, breaths only half-formed on deep, throaty exhales. He grunted above her, his baritone deepening the sound, making an animal out of the gentleman in her bed. Maggie arched her back, whimpering as liquid heat arose to consume every inch of her.

Pierre sunk into her clenching heat, gasping against her hair. The roll of his hips breaking to a few, stuttered half twists. She could feel him, the way he pulsed within her, his end filling her as he softened.

They kept gasping, kept groaning and whining into each other’s mouths as they kissed and kissed. Her lips were swollen long ago, a new ache forming with every press and brush. Seconds bled into moments, their hearts slowing, and breaths doing the same. Pierre gazed down at her; his weight rested on his elbows.

“Are you alright, Maggie?” She inhaled, a sharp cooling breath that filled her still pounding chest.

“Yes, I am…”


End file.
